My last post has generated quite a bit of interesting discussing. In comments, Joe has been raising some especially interesting points. In his most recent comment he writes:
I also understanding the “pushing things to the ledge” rationale (and I’ve heard it before), but I’ll try to make my point again, hopefully a bit more clearly. When I initially said that this sounds like it suffers from a market-oriented outlook, I had in mind the specific assumption that once we exhaust fossil fuels that we will be ABLE to orient production toward and carry out creating new, more sustainable extractive technologies. If there are “no” fossil fuels (if we run supplies into the ground in some sense), which are integral to modern industrial production AND society, how are we going to fuel the change in “our relation to resources and energy”? When I say fuel, I don’t just mean directly fueling production, but supporting people and social organization. I work in an anti-hunger nonprofit and one of our chief concerns is child-hood hunger and what that does to their development, susceptibility to disease and other risks. I don’t want to make a direct analogy, because I know it’s not /the same/, but it’s the kind of dilemma I think you and others are over-looking when advocating that we “starve the beast” by eating up energy.
The concern with getting “business and corporations to respond when it is not in their economic interests to do so” sounds like a fool’s errand too. It’s not that those organizations aren’t relevant, but that I simply don’t believe they WILL or conceivably CAN act “when it’s not in their economic interests to do so”, where economic interests includes a long-term strategic hope at “coming back” after some kind of grand energy revolution. That is, not under the current regime of attraction (capitalism). This though might be the more relevant context in which to think of how “the catastrophe has already happened”, where economic sustainability is the fantasy that must be traversed.
I think we’re actually quite close to one another here. Like Joe, I’m of the position that industry can’t respond because of the massive redundancy and negative feedback loops regulating world economy and businesses. For most businesses, to change in the ways requires mean that they lose their ability to compete which means that they fall out of existence. The situation they find themselves in is not so much one of a personal business decision, as a business decision arising from a network of relations among businesses (again, this is part of the importance of recognize that ecology exists at all levels).
read on!
Regarding the issues Joe brings up concerning hunger and the sustainability of societies, I think we’re going to end up face massive societal suffering one way or another precisely because our lives and society are so intertwined with this economic system. This is one reason I think that it’s impossible to think environmental and economic politics apart from one another. They are one and the same issue and are thoroughly intertwined. With that said, Joe seems to be suggesting that within my framework the two alternatives are mutually exclusive, i.e., that one either adopts the accelerationist strategy of pushing things to the point of collapse or pursues the formation of other types of society, energy, etc. I don’t think these two options are mutually exclusive.
However, I do think that it’s important to recognize the economic realities facing working and middle class people. Working and middle class people are dependent on this system to live. In many respects it’s not so much that people are ideologically duped or in the grips of a fantasy (though these things too), but that they continue to live in these ways, because the economic regime of attraction in which they live more or less forces them into this way of living. Environmentalism, currently, is expensive. Leaving many without an alternative. They must support themselves and their families and this requires that they work and make due with the goods available to them.
In other words, one of the things I’m trying to point out with my broader conception of ecology is that we have to attend to the ecology of human lives in the relational concreteness of their economic dependence, consumption dependence, social dependence, etc. These issues have to be addressed in order for viable alternatives to become possible. Moreover, humans, being the creatures that they are (selfish, myopic, with little long-term foresight), I think there’s little hope to be found in the moralistic, ascetic proposals put forward by many environmental activists. I am not saying that these proposals aren’t right. I am saying that they are not realistic and therefore are not real solutions to these problems.
For example, from a game theoretical point of view, why should my neighbor get solar panels, fuel efficient lights, go vegetarian, etc., knowing full well that others around him will refuse to do these things? This game theoretical problem exists at all levels of the socio-natural world. It exists at the level of how individuals engage in their decision making processes with respect to one another. It exists at the level of how businesses make decisions with respect to one another. It exists at the level of how nations make decisions with respect to one another. So the question here is “given this game theoretical clusterfuck where it makes little rational sense for individuals, businesses, and nations to make sacrifices that others won’t, how do we navigate a path out of this clusterfuck to a workable alternative?” My inability to see the way out of this game theoretical clusterfuck is part of the reason I’m led to these unhappy accelarationist conclusions. It’s hard for me to see how anything can realistically been done until these entities are forced to do something.
Larval Subjects . 
March 19, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Very interesting thoughts. I have a few more comments to make. I am still wondering why you entirely discount political possibilities? I think you are right that from an individual game-theoretical standpoint it makes no sense for me to spend money on solar panels if I am the only one in my neighborhood doing so. But legislation could force builders to install solar panels in new homes or new office buildings etc.
Similarly with businesses. You rightly point out that for most businesses to change their ways would mean going out of business but businesses were making the same argument about labor hours when Marx was writing Capital. Once labor hour legislation was passed it changed the rules of the game in a literal sense. The game-theoretical approach relies on their being clear rules to the game but those rules are not set in stone.
The question to me is: is the current political situation hopeless? It seems to me you are arguing that it is (and you may very well be right). But this is the question that I keep returning to in my own thoughts when I am thinking about economics: what limitations does our political system place on what can be done?
I realize one of the major challenges with environmental problems is that they have to be dealt with on a global level rather than a country by country basis. So this, perhaps, places inherent limits on political possibilities.
I am also concerned that the acceleration approach may push certain ecological systems past a point of no return. Perhaps it is naive of me but I still feel like I want to cling to whatever little hope we may have…
March 19, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Brian,
The reason I’m so pessimistic about political possibilities has to do with the role that money plays in contemporary politics (especially in the United States following the Citizens United decision). Again we have to consider the ecology in which elected officials are embedded. Their economic, temporal, and media ecology has created a situation in which they have to raise massive amounts of money in order to run. Moreover, because of Citizens United they now live in a media ecology where every political action is highly measured against the possibility of negative political advertizing due to the ability of these industries to deploy unlimited monies to advance their interests. As a result, politicians have become beholden to big money or the very industries that are the principle source of the problem. This entails that average citizen activism can have very little leverage on politicians. It’s a horrible situation. I guess my point with respect to political ecology would be that we need to avoid abstractly thinking of politics sans economic, temporal (the short election cycles), and media ecologies, advocating pie in the sky conceptions of politicians as being motivated by “what is right or wrong” or being “persuaded by arguments”. I just don’t think this is an accurate conception of the real political ecology in which they act.
As for the accelerationist point, I tend to think the catastrophe has already happened. We’re just waiting for its effects to be fully felt. At this point I think things are pretty irreversible. If that’s the case, the question then becomes that of the conditions under which it is possible to set about building a new world. Within the current socio-natural ecology I don’t think we’re yet able to set about this work due to the reasons I’ve outlined.
March 19, 2012 at 6:04 pm
A few worries concerning accelarationism:
–the entire modern industrial system is overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels, and global warming is going to require a coordinated global response, necessitating the continued existence of a functioning communications grid and a functioning industrial infrastrucutre. If we committ ourselves to precipitating a socio-industrial collapse through exhaustive resource extraction, there may be no alternative energy source or industrial system in place, meaning that there would be no globally coordinated response to the global warming the mass extinction that it might entail.
–As the collapse of industrial civilization approaches/ begins, it could very well exacerbate some of the nastiest political tendencies of the modern world, i.e. the genocidal scapegoating of marginal groups, millenarian fascist movements, the use of war as an elite method for distracting from systemic social dysfunctions, and the escalation of international conflicts over the dwindling resources that remain. In other words: an accelerationist response may not force any sort of rational collective action on anyone’s part, and in fact seems likely to exacerbate symptoms of the macro-social death drive.
–Nuclear weapons still exist–in fact they have internationally proliferated since the end of the Cold War– and it is not so difficult to imagine an approaching era of geopolitics in which their multipolar deployment seems more likely than it does now. And a rise in facist tendencies, political scapegoating, elite bellicosity and international conflict is the exact cocktail of forces that is likely to lead to a nuclear war.
For these reasons, I tend to think that we have no choice but to try and get ready for the pending crises in ways that mitigate against some of the latter scenarios–prioritizng efforts to build a new system within the framework of the current one. And that’s why I believe accelartionism to be an extremely dangerous approach.
March 19, 2012 at 6:14 pm
I am in entire agreement with you when you say we need to think about the actual ecology in which politicians are embedded as opposed to thinking in abstract terms about politics or economics. And I share your pessimism about the current nature of our political ecology.
There is no doubt that moneyed interests have a great deal of power in our current system. However, I still think that public opinion is an important force and advertising is not the only force that shapes public opinion (though it is a very important one). It seems to me that if the public at large were truly committed to legislating changes it would force politician’s hands. The imperative for politicians, the one built into our current ecology, is re-relection. This, of course, requires more awareness on the part of the public. The moneyed interests are aware when legislation that is going to effect them is passed. The public usually is not. That to me seems like the most hopeless aspect of our current political ecology.
Of course, you may be right that we have already passed the point of no return in which case a political solution becomes, perhaps, a moot point.
Thanks for the very interesting discussion. By the way, I am a huge fan of your work. I am a graduate student and I am studying Deleuze and I have been reading your book Difference and Givenness and it is truly excellent (I just ordered Democracy of Objects). Your book is the most exciting book I have read in a long time. Take care.
March 19, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Aaron,
Your second point is the best counter-argument I’ve heard yet. Thanks! However, despite this I wonder if there might not be some dodgy temporal reasoning at work here. Your point seems to be premised on the idea that the accelerationist is committed to devoting all action to accelerating the crisis without doing anything else. However, is it likely that social dynamics would actually unfold in this way? In other words, as the crisis escalates– or alternatively, as it becomes more clear insofar as the catastrophe is hypothesized to already have taken place in logical time –wouldn’t this compel the exploration of alternative energy sources, forms of economy, and social formations?
March 19, 2012 at 7:41 pm
Brian,
I wanted to make one further point. I think it’s important to avoid the conclusion that political action only takes place in and through engagement with government and the party systems. It seems to me that government and party systems actively function to abolish politics. In this respect, it could be that politics genuinely takes place outside of the state.
March 19, 2012 at 9:50 pm
See your point there– perhaps some juggling between efforts to accelerate the collapse of the petro-corporate juggernaut while working to build an alternative to it might be in order. But I guess I would still worry, in that scenario, about pulling the rug out from underneath the latter type of project by pursuing the former with too much vigor. Certain temporal considerations may be unavoidable in that regard. Specifically: it may not simply be a question of realizing that the catastrophy has alreoady happened; there may also be a sense in which different scales of catastrophy are still presently more or less likely, depending on the collective actions we take or fail to take in the near future. And if they are to be taken, those actions may depend upon the continued existence (for a time) of a functioning petro-industrial system and the availability of the energy upon which it relies. That is: we may need to use an oil-based system to develop an alternative to oil and implement the alternative infrastructure that it will require (an absolutely massive project whose dimensions are not fully understood by a majority of non-technical folk).
If society collapses rapidly, on the other hand, and to such an extent that infrastructure, education, literacy, science, technology, historical memory and all forms of social order go down with the darker sides of the current assemblage, there might not be much opportunity left over for the construction of alternatives, and we might end up with some form of catastrophic feudalism on our hands. The centuries of European chaos that followed the fall of Rome strike me as historically salient in that regard.
So as a compromise position, I maintain that we should accelate the collapse of this system by using its energetic resources to overcome our dependency upon them, and to make the massive changes in our social, economic, industrial and political systems that this needs to entail, rather than trying to use up all resources as quickly as possible. I guess you could call this approach “drastic overhaulism.” I find it preferable to both pure accelarationism and consumer reformism.
March 19, 2012 at 9:53 pm
P.S. don’t know why I spelled “catastrophe” as “catastrophy.” Maybe a certain subconscious terror of the word was factoring there. Oops.
March 19, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Check this, it’s pretty relevant:
March 21, 2012 at 2:45 am
[…] Levi Bryant has a series of bleak (some more than others) posts (see here, here, here, here, and here) in which he outlines his growing pessimism about what he considers to be the […]
April 3, 2012 at 5:48 pm
This reminds me of conversations I had with Marxists who were critical of the welfare state because they believed it slowed down the inevitable crisis that would bring about the revolution (and indeed perhaps it has).
But living in the UK with a disability of my own, and a daughter with a disability, I am on welfare and what’s more would have no insurance in the US so it’s quite likely my daughter could have died at birth or i would be building up an unholy debt to keep her alive.
So for obvious reasons i never quite gelled with the apocalyptic Marxists nor am I a big fan of accelerationism.
I wonder when you write there is no Other, yet seem intent on seeing no alternative to simplistic neo-liberal game theories that assume a Malthusian/ hobbesian logic because the trap is that it’s the rationality of the corporations that assumes these game theory forms and to step out of such a mediated view, a view mediated by an Other that supposedly doesn’t exist, requires one to act outside this Other, even if by accident.
Or maybe the rest of the world can carry on believing in the efforts of those who constantly strive to keep a lid on it and prevent starvation, war etc (how will the beast act when it’s starving hungry but not yet weak?? Scary), the people I meet every day who are not bankers and therefore do not act as a rabid Robinson Crusoe and to whom therefore most game theories do not apply. and when America with it’s high (in comparison to the rest of the 6.5billion members of the world – and that’s not America bashing, just calling out your Other from another view ) density of climate change deniers, libertarians etc etc does implode, we’ll hopefully have invested in our technology that will not bring about utopia but stem the amount of death that this will bring on – oh it’s so heroic to claim one has faced one’s mortality when one is unlikely to die) and have something however modest to build with afterwards. And that’s even with the eurozone debacle.
But hey maybe that’s an issue with my Other, with my continuing saga with my delphic existence escaping the place where I suffered the Trauma, that was also the place where Clement Attlee was educated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee), maybe…
Usually at the point where I see this Delphic wave coming, I jump ship, so by all accounts I should now having realised this convergence jump into the Accelerationist fire with you, but I can’t do it this time brother, as much as i respect your work.
Not this time :-)